


Interception

by tatooedlaura



Series: Interception [1]
Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-06-15 18:10:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15418668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatooedlaura/pseuds/tatooedlaura
Summary: Late night neck rubbing ensues ...





	Interception

The train whistle woke her but the footsteps kept her from falling back to sleep. He was pacing again.

A lot.

With an inner groan and an outer fist clench, she turned over, sandwiched her head between two pillows and prayed he’d go to sleep before the sun came up.

Nothing she wanted less than a tired Mulder and his grammar Nazi ways meeting her head on at 7:05am with a plastered on fake happy attitude and a swiftly declining pessimistic view of the world. It would make for a very, very ugly Saturday.

And she didn’t want an ugly Saturday.

She wanted a quiet Saturday of driving and tottering-pile vehicle paperwork.

Inner ear infection forced them into the car as opposed to flying, driving towards Denver at less than breakneck speeds. Why did her ear have to act up now? It couldn’t have waited four days before screwing with her, making her dizzy, drops and antibiotics on the table.

This damn suspect better get life for the trouble she was going to to get to his trial with Mulder’s testimony and her science. He’d better be found guilty and possibly rot in a quiet little hole in the corner of the universe she would never think about again.

Fuck.

Now she wanted to pace.

Sitting up too quick, she waited until the world steadied and her ear popped open before venturing to the connecting door. Not thinking to knock, she walked in, took stock of Mulder’s wanderings, calculated proper intercept and began silently moving beside him, matching shuffle, Mulder shortening his slightly, hers lengthening a fraction, meeting in the middle to bounce from door to wall to bathroom to wall to door in a flat loop of speeding mind and tightened heart.

Three passes it took for him to reach over, find her hand, catch her fingers and pull her to a stop, “are you going to pace with me all night?”

“If I have to.”

“You don’t have to though.”

Brief squeeze to his thumb, she kept her hold on it, “I guess it’s more like a ‘you’re awake, I’m awake, might as well be tired as hell tomorrow together’ kind of thing.” Looking up at him, wondering how long it would take for that crease between his eyebrows to become a permanent thing, “will you sit down for me?”

“I’m pacing for a reason, Scully, ‘cause I can’t sit down.”

“How about you try for me and give what I’m going to do a chance?”

Sitting as ordered, “are you going to do some voodoo on me, get my shit in order so I can take a nap and not annoy the hell out of you in 5 hours?”

Brief loss of contact as she shut the bright lights of the room off, dropping the darkness around them in shadowy sheets, she was careful not to poke his eyes as she reached for his face, fingers against temple hairline, thumbs on his eyebrows, “close your eyes.”

“This is gonna get weird, I can feel it.”

“Shut up, Mulder.” Her voice whispered, however, her tone gently as she pushed lightly against the circled bones around his eyes, rubbing, moving from one end of his brow to the other, “I’m going to see if I can get you to relax a little.” Scooting her knees between his, she moved closer, invading territories kept well-guarded except under cover of dark, “you need to take a deep breath and let one thing go for me. The worry your testimony won’t carry the weight it should, your anger at Dennison, your wonder about what I’ll do if I ever discover another of those videos of yours. Whatever you want. Just something.”

His mouth twitched to a smile briefly at the video comment, “I don’t even have those videos anymore.”

Thumbs moving to the crease above his nose, she smoothed the wrinkle back, shaping skin to even contour, “did you wear them out? Can’t afford new ones on a G-man’s salary?”

“Got better things to do with my time now.” His head dropped forward slightly, pressure against the pads of her fingers increasing, “you should do this all the time.”

“What? Get an ear infection and force us to drive halfway across the country? I think not, Agent Mulder.” Her fingers were moving now, too, joining in tandem, ten spots of tactile heaven to a malleable Mulder, drifting away on sensory overload, happy sounds vibrating deep in his throat. With her own smile, she asked him quietly, “enjoying?”

Hhhmm’ing his response, she ramped it up just slightly, shifting fingers behind ears, thumbs now at junction of jaw, able to feel contracting muscles as he smiled again, “I’d pay good money for you to do this every night.”

Yeah, she blushed a little but it was dark and she would not be judged.

“You know I’d do it for tacos and brownies.”

Drifting down his neck, her fingers continued ministration miracles, thumbs now to the sides of his throat, feeling bobbing Adam’s apple and neck tendons she forgot the names of the moment she touched him, “I think we passed a Taco Bell a mile or two back.”

Walking hands to the back of his neck, she rubbed out tense tendons and sent a shiver she could feel down his spine when she slid her fingers into his hair, massaging his skull with practiced movement, “maybe later. Right now, I think you should forget everything else as well and focus just on my hands.”

His head fell forward of its own volition, forehead connecting with her stomach and not giving one good God-damn about whatever else happened in the world because he could feel her warmth through her shirt and the pull of Jersey cotton down over her breasts. If she did this much longer, he was pretty sure he’d probably forget how to breath but …. Well … whatever.

“Focused.”

Amused by his head against her, she continued, whisper dropping to his ears as her hands drifted down and out across his shoulder blades, pushing, kneading, working knots, “now, I’d like you to remember that time we skipped work and you took me to sit beside the Potomac, brought us hot dogs from that guy and got him to throw in extra pickles. You got all fancy with your napkin bringing and your water bottle condensation cleaning and we sat there for hours and talked about string theory and mummification and you tried to convince me that pie wasn’t the devil and we took a nap under that tree and then the squirrels came and stole our leftovers and you dropped your shoe in the water and had to go back to work in your sock.”

He would not remove his head, regardless but he did open his eyes for a moment, staring down the barrel of threadbare shirt and flannel covered thighs towards a floor he couldn’t see given her proximity, “we never did that.”

Working now down his spine, back muscles hard to loose under her hands, “we should. I think it would be a good for us to break a rule or two now and again.”

“With steet vendor hot dogs and lost shoes?”

To reach lower, she had to lean in more, press him further into her belly, “sounds pretty perfect to me.”

His smile turned first the right side of his mouth up, then his left, spreading slowly but surely, “I think we can manage that then.”

“Good.”

She reached down as far as she could, the dip in his lower back teasingly just out of reach, then returning north again, she pushed deeper, arms trembling with angle and force.

Hitting a good spot, Mulder’s hands moved, first to her waist to steady her, then, hands splayed, began kneading her ass in sync. He didn’t realize it until almost a minute later, when he felt her hands still on his neck once again, fingers tickling spine, thumbs below ears.

He stopped as well.

But didn’t move his hands.

“I’ve forgotten all those things you told me to forget.”

“So have I.”

Slowly, slowly, slowly, he let his hands fall away, clasping his knees instead of her, keeping them to himself in a wretchingly difficult gesture of partnerly nonsense, “are you tired?”

Sometimes, just sometimes, all the time, she wished things were different, “sort of.”

Having enjoyed her hands a little too much, “I should probably let you get some sleep then, shouldn’t I? We’ve got some driving to do tomorrow if we’re going to make it by Sunday night.

Memories of his touch smoldered on her waist, her ass, her belly, “or you could turn around and I can get at a few muscles I couldn’t reach.”

“T-Rex arms strike again?”

“Always, Mulder.”

He didn’t object, twisting on the bed sheets so her back was to him, “okay?”

“Dino arms can reach you now, thank you.”

Both knew his touching her had been an involuntary thing. He never would have done it had he been awake, aware, attentive to more than just her hands but he felt the guilt creeping up and with it, “hey, why did you just tense up all of a sudden?”

Stupid hesitation was his death knell, “the case.”

As she dug into his lower back, pushing against him with fists and knuckles, “liar.”

Quiet held session between them until his voice carried to her quietly, “I’m sorry I touched you like that. I didn’t mean to. I just … I didn’t mean to.”

Her hands disappeared for a minute then he felt them snake over his shoulders, hugging his tightly from behind, “I know you didn’t. It’s that fine line we have, Mulder. Sometimes someone falls over the edge of it for a minute but then they scramble back, regardless of how difficult and irritating it is to have that line in the first place.”

“It’s difficult and irritating for you, too?”

Chuckling in his ear, she squeezed him closer, breath tickling, “you have no idea sometimes.” Interjecting, as much as she hated to, the humor necessary to pry them apart and get them to sleep in their own beds, “especially when you wear those black socks with your basketball shorts and you have sweaty pit stains on your threadbare tanktop and I can smell you five feet away. You are quite the irresistible specimen right then.”

He hated she was giving them their out but knowing she was right, “kinda like when you have on your autopsy cap on, I mean, I can barely keep my hands off you … especially when you throw in those squeaky white granny tennis shoes.”

Turning her head enough to kiss his cheek, “g’night, Mulder. Try to get some sleep.”

Hugging her arms, he leaned into her lips for a moment, “you, too.”

&&&&&&&&&&

She left the room, closing the door behind her, pulling the sheets on the bed straight, fluffing the squashy hotel pillow then, without consent from her brain, she turned and opened the adjoining door again. Seeing him pacing, she calculated the intercept for the second time in less than an hour and began walking beside him, holding his thumb and cruising the room in 38 step fashion.


End file.
